Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols) in P2 (Provided by Summit Entertainment for The Star)

In some ways, "P2" reminds me of the fantastic 2005 flick "Hard Candy."

It's mostly a two-person show, a man and a woman, in an isolated area, one stalking the other.

Unfortunately, that's where the comparisons end.

"Candy" was a powder keg that played with the audience's loyalties and expectations, had smart, intriguing characters, and it creeped viewers out using no gore whatsoever.

"P2" does the opposite. The characters are uninteresting, stupid and listless, they chase each other around, doing nothing in particular, and employ shoddy, pointless gore.

Quickly, the plot: Career gal Angela Bridges (Rachel Nichols) is in her New York City office building all alone Christmas Eve finishing up some work while her family impatiently waits for her in New Jersey. When she finally is ready to leave, she finds herself locked in the parking garage with a psychopathic security guard (Wes Bentley, "American Beauty").

Apparently he's looking for a date, and he'll do anything to score points with her, including beat to death a co-worker who got a little too frisky with her during the office Christmas party.

She seems like a nice enough girl, but Nichols is not ready to carry a film on her own. She doesn't have the presence or the acting chops to be much of a heroine.

Bentley doesn't give her much help. He comes off like a 6-year-old with glandular problems, continually misbehaving and then wondering why he's getting in trouble.

To be fair, they don't get much help from a script that offers no character development, no interesting peripheral characters. We get no idea why Bentley's character is so lacking in social skills and has to resort to kidnapping, murder and mayhem to get a date.

And Rachel is written as a complete moron. She has at least three real chances to escape or overpower her tormentor, but continually passes them up.

The most egregious of these occurs when she finds a working phone, picks it up to call the police, then drops it to go after her purse (which is being guarded by a vicious Rottweiler) to get to her cell phone, which she knows has no service.

And "P2" really puts the "ill" in "thriller." It offers few scares, but plenty of gimmicky, cliched deaths. We also get the brutal onscreen killing of a dog, a comically graphic broken fingernail, and a couple of generic dead bodies.

As with any dark, confined space, the garage setting has the potential to make a terrific horror/thriller, but subpar acting, listless direction and a careless script make this a must-miss.

If you want some excitement, skip the garage and park at a meter without feeding it. The parking ticket would be money better spent than a ticket to this stinker.